In 2013 Birmingham City Council announced the closure of Bloomsbury library because of a difficulty with the heating system. I found this particularly sad because it was a favourite haunt of my childhood and youth. It now appears to have been the thin edge of a wedge of library closures. While there is currently a focus on the slashing of services at the new Library of Birmingham (and rightly so), the loss of local libraries should also be of concern to all of us. It is good to know that Bloomsbury library is listed, so the building should survive in some form or another, but hopefully it won’t be sold to the planners and might continue in providing the service for which it was built.

The introduction of free libraries in the nineteenth century was a source of much civic pride and a great asset to the people of Birmingham…

Love is in the air, says British Corporate Thriller writer A A Abbott. But in a dark way. We were both reading at ‘Hearts of Darkness’, a live fiction evening last night at Brewsmiths in the Jewellery Quarter. The theme of the evening was the darker side of love, with the result that the love stories were twisted around themes such as murder, jealousy, ghosts, sex toys, genetic cloning, and ecclesiastical senior management (as applied to the saints).

Big thanks to Andrew and Angela who made us welcome, and to Donna Marie Finn for organising it.

A few weeks ago we were just a few people with a wallpaper pasting table and a petition and a crumpled banner outside the Library of Birmingham. Now we’re going to ‘Make Some Noise’, to quote Benjamin Zephaniah…